Review by Karl Verhoven

This volume of Get Schooled packs in nineteen chapters, meaning they’re shorter in general than those seen in earlier collections.

Get Schooled 2 ended with Hwajim Na confronting an already jailed thug, and the opening chapter reveals why being part of the Teacher’s Rights Protection Agency is a personal crusade for him.

That’s just a momentary stopover, though, before transferring attention to the TPA’s other field operative Hanrim Im. It seems the public face presented by two star basketball playing sisters isn’t their true personality. With this story arc Yongtaek Chae taps into the remorseless bullying seemingly overlooked if a school has a successful sports team. “Disciplining team members is part of my job as captain” seems to have an extraordinarily wide remit.

There’s a formula to Chae’s stories of bullies underestimating the teacher sent to sort them out, and once their confidence has been revealed as false there’s a period of plotting and manipulation. Chae keeps things fresh via the different school backgrounds and the variety he applies to the unpleasant behaviour, and here he only applies the formula to the first of three stories.

Chae switches tack for the second, which focuses on bullying carried out in the name of anti-discrimination in a primary school. It’s introduced via the head of the TPA discussing the relentless anti-communist messages endured during his childhood, a regular occurrence in Korea, a once single state split into two via political differences since the 1950s. The well defined characterisation of the teacher concerned results in a self-righteous monster unable to see how skewed her priorities are as she removes joys of childhood, leading to classrooms being the equivalent of ideological re-education camps.

It’s a story that requires more than usual from artist Garam Han, because although there’s a satirical aspect, it requires greater concentration on facial expressions, and he delivers some beauties. It’s been a strength throughout the series, often when showing Na on the verge of exploding, but just about managing to suppress it.

Even while handling a serious and sensitive subject more esoteric than plain bullying, Chae isn’t subtle, and that’s also the case when he moves onto the third topic, beginning with Na spotting a beaten child scavenging for food. The sledgehammer technique here is positive, raising sympathy for an innocent and highlighting how social services don’t always manage to get things right.

The worst scumbag spotlighted to date closes Get Schooled 3, a completely irredeemable specimen in a really grim story. For school-age readers seeing bullies get what’s coming to them is even greater wish fulfilment than superheroes, but in every case seen over three volumes the solution is always someone tougher, and there’s surely going to have to be a time when Chae digs a little deeper.